MISUSE OF THE STRIKE WEAPON

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1913, Page 13

MISUSE OF THE STRIKE WEAPON

"The new trade unionism, which takes the form of the unauthorised strike, seems bent upon justifying its critics," says the Nation. "It lakes the wrong issue with unerring precision. The general principle — that the employer should pretend to no control over the woikman in hi 9 leisure hous — is indefeasible. The contract of employment should clearly only run over hours of employment, and it is an important condition of industrial liberty that any person in employment, whether he be a professional man, a clerk, an artisan, _ or a labourer, should be free to live his own life outside the office, or the mine, or the workshop, according to his own judgment and pleasure. But there are some exceptions to evt»ry rulo _of this kind. The NorthEastern railway men happened, unfortunately, to light upon one of the most obvious exceptions. A man. must not so behave in his leisure time as to make himself incompetent, or to prove that he is incompetent, for the particular job which he is employed to do, particularly when that job involves public responsibility. ... A railway company can rutt no risks w ith the safety of the public, and assuming the conviction of Knox to have been justified, the public is unanimously agreed that lie was not severely but leniently dealt with in being retained for inferior work, while temporarily deposed from his peculiarly rcsnonsible ta«k." The Nation fears Ilial. the workman if. allowing the weapon of Ihc strike to be "jagged and blunted and splintered by lining it on the little stones that annoy him without really obstructing his path, and which, small 0' they are, are hard to break."

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